Polling Quick Hits:
For the second consecutive Sunday, YouGov/CBS released a trio of battleground state polls. Instead of Arizona, Nevada and Virginia, this week offers newly competitive Georgia along with the more traditionally close Florida and New Hampshire. The results across the two weeks are largely consistent. New Hampshire, like Virginia, has in the aftermath of the conventions witnessed polls showing a mostly double digit lead for Clinton. On the other end of the spectrum, Georgia, as with Arizona and Nevada a week ago, can be found in a range from nearly tied to a giving a maximum toss up level advantage (<5 points) to Trump. Finally, Florida falls somewhere between those two bookends: a slight but consistent tilt toward Clinton. All jibe well with where FHQ currently has the averages in these states, and the order is consistent with the Electoral College Spectrum below.

Florida:
There is not much to say about Florida at this point in time. Of the five publicly available post-convention polls, everything has fit within a tight tied to Clinton +5 range. This YouGov survey sits atop the upper end of the range though it should be noted that that five point edge is the modal post-convention result.

FHQ mentioned on Friday that Florida is part of a tier of blue states with Iowa, North Carolina and Ohio clustered together and right up against the partisan line. There is some very slight separation between the Florida/North Carolina pair and Iowa and Ohio. That may or may not prove significant in the long term. All four are within about half a point of each other. Again, the separation is very slight.

Georgia:
In some respects, neighboring Georgia is a mirror image of Florida to the Trump side of the partisan line. Two-thirds of the post-convention polling in the Peach state has pointed toward a Trump lead there, and the range in those surveys -- again like Florida -- has run anywhere from tied to Trump +5. The difference is that there were a couple of Clinton leaning polls of Georgia in the period immediately following the conclusion of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. At least one of those -- the Clinton +7 from JMC Analytics -- appears to be an outlier. Both, however, have kept Georgia's average (given the FHQ methodology) on the lower end of the range cited above: close but tipped in Trump's direction at this time.

New Hampshire:

Changes (August 14)

State

Before

After

New Hampshire

Toss Up Clinton

Lean Clinton

As was recently discussed in the context of a new poll in Virginia on Friday, Colorado, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia form a core of states that have hovered around the line between the Toss Up and Lean categories here at FHQ. To those point, however, only New Hampshire had not pushed over to the Lean side of that divide. Had not. With the addition of yet another post-convention poll showing the margin in the Granite state close to ten points -- around the Strong/Lean line in other words -- the FHQ average for New Hampshire climbs above the five point line and into the Lean area.

Significantly, New Hampshire joining that group of states nudges Clinton over the 270 electoral vote mark on the strength of just the Strong and Lean categories of states. Even excluding the blue toss up states, then, Clinton is above where she would need to be to claim the White House. Although 2012 was much less volatile in the polls and constantly showed a 332-206 Obama advantage in the FHQ electoral college projection, the president always (from July through November) needed at least some toss up states to push him over the 270 electoral vote mark. That may yet be true again in the future for Hillary Clinton, but it is not true right now.

2 The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he or she won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, Trump won all the states up to and including Virginia (all Clinton's toss up states plus Virginia), he would have 282 electoral votes. Trump's numbers are only totaled through the states he would need in order to get to 270. In those cases, Clinton's number is on the left and Trumps's is on the right in bold italics.To keep the figure to 50 cells, Washington, DC and its three electoral votes are included in the beginning total on the Democratic side of the spectrum. The District has historically been the most Democratic state in the Electoral College.

3 New Hampshire and Virginia are collectively the states where Clinton crosses the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line. If those two states are separated with Clinton winning Virginia and Trump, New Hampshire, then there would be a tie in the Electoral College.

NOTE: Distinctions are made between states based on how much they favor one candidate or another. States with a margin greater than 10 percent between Clinton and Trump are "Strong" states. Those with a margin of 5 to 10 percent "Lean" toward one of the two (presumptive) nominees. Finally, states with a spread in the graduated weighted averages of both the candidates' shares of polling support less than 5 percent are "Toss Up" states. The darker a state is shaded in any of the figures here, the more strongly it is aligned with one of the candidates. Not all states along or near the boundaries between categories are close to pushing over into a neighboring group. Those most likely to switch -- those within a percentage point of the various lines of demarcation -- are included on the Watch List below.

The Watch List1

State

Switch

Alaska

from Lean Trump

to Toss Up Trump

Arizona

from Toss Up Trump

to Toss Up Clinton

Arkansas

from Strong Trump

to Lean Trump

Georgia

from Toss Up Trump

to Toss Up Clinton

Missouri

from Toss Up Trump

to Lean Trump

Nevada

from Toss Up Trump

to Toss Up Clinton

New Hampshire

from Lean Clinton

to Toss Up Clinton

New Jersey

from Strong Clinton

to Lean Clinton

Virginia

from Lean Clinton

to Toss Up Clinton

Wisconsin

from Lean Clinton

to Strong Clinton

1Graduated weighted average margin within a fraction of a point of changing categories.